What HAVE I been doing lately? I was sick, I was busy, I was tired, all that. But I did a lovely little DIY to share with you…

I used to do most of my writing, homework, and blogging from this desk:

Uninspiring, isn’t it?

I thought for a long time about getting a new desk, but I really like this one in a lot of ways. It is solid. Heavy. Has lots of little cubbies. Yet the oak finish and the brass-and-porcelain hardware were so dated. I had a mess of cables and clutter everywhere. Something had to change.

It was time to paint.

Here’s what it really looked like, under the clutter:

Faux-oak back panel? Adios!

As part of the solution to the storage issue, I decided to mount my flat-panel monitor on the desk so I could put my laptop under it and run all the cables behind it, out of the way. I used to have it set on a book to get it to eye level. Cables were a huge part of the mess in the first picture. (Never mind the beer and the mac and cheese.)

So I built this brace with a couple of pieces of wood and gave it a few coats of paint. This was meant to go up on the back of the desk to hold the monitor arm. I used the same mount that I used on my TV that I put on the wall in my bedroom a few months ago. It’s perfect for my 20″ monitor.

But despite the fact that I measured and thought I had everything right, the monitor ended up lower than eye level. No good. This presented another problem – the monitor mount slides over the top of the backpiece, which is mounted on the brace. But the monitor is too tall for me to do that if I mount it any higher! I can’t get the mounting over the backpiece.

Soooo, I had to leave the monitor on the brace while I re-mounted it. This was scaaaary… I was so afraid I was going to drop it and kill the screen. But with the aid of a stack of books, I was able to balance it just right and get it screwed back in where it needed to be.

When the monitor was in place, I started in on a few more storage solutions. Since I planned to eliminate the big chunky desktop box where I previously stored all my pens and pencils and stuff, I decided to turn the keyboard tray into a drawer. I found these metal mesh bins for $3.00 each at Wal-Mart and tacked them each in with a penny nail. They even matched the silver-mesh desk accessories I’d already had for years. Perfect!

Then for the cubbies over the printer, I bought some plain cardboard magazine files at the Container Store. I was worried that sliding them in and out would chip the new paint surface, so I hot-glued some felt to the bottoms. I used the same felt to line the shelves of the cubbies over the main part of the desk as well. These files were actually too tall for the space, so I cut down the tops a bit and then finished them off with a little ribbon to hide the cut edges.

Those now hold all of my printer paper, stationery, receipt files and notebooks. The final touch was the back panel of the desk – no more faux-oak fiberboard, but I needed something to pull it all together and work with the dark color of the desk and the woodwork in the room, the light color of the files, and the dusky purple of the walls.

I spotted the perfect fabric at Hobby Lobby, and with the help of my trusty staple-gun, created a new back for the desk. I even worked it out to use panels of fabric behind the monitor section, so I could run all the monitor cables behind one panel and then up through another to the laptop – so there’s not a single cable dangling down from the monitor.

All of the desktop cables are clustered right around the laptop and then go right off the back. Some new brushed metal hardware is dressing up the drawers. And I covered the desktop with a few cheap pre-cut glass panels to protect the paint from chipping.

I’ll never be one of those people who has a clean, minimalist desk. It just won’t happen. But this is darn close, and I think it’s awesome.

I am in love with the fabric panels and how they tie in all the colors of the study, plus the pale blue of the living room right next to it. It’s not too cutesy but not too boring (and the coordinating ribbon was a nice bonus). I love my new magazine files and my little mesh-bin drawer. I love how the paint color matches the color of my bookcases and the lovely old woodwork and molding in that room. I love the free space from having my monitor up and my laptop under it. I can just set the keyboard on top of the laptop when I need the space in front of me to write or read.

And I love that now I have a desk where I love to blog. Hello again, guys!

I haven’t been able to get CommentLuv to find the feed on my site since I started using this Wordpress theme, so my last posts never show up when I leave comments on other people’s blogs. I emailed CommentLuv support about it and they said:

you have not got an autofind feed url in your site header , commentluv needs to see where your feed is to be able to read it.

Does anyone know how to get this autofind feed URL thinger? I emailed my theme template designer but haven’t heard back. Surely it’s just some simple line of code in header.php, right?

Help, please.

Fixed it! With a little help from the folks at CommentLuv and a good old Google search, I’m set to go.

I added these lines after the meta tags in header.php:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” /><meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> Atom Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” /><meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />

And made sure that <?php wp_head(); ?> was right before the </head> command.

It works, everyone! Hurrah!

Even though I’ve moved to an apartment, I still can’t shake the urge to make a mess redoing things in my living space. I’ve painted everything, installed a new light switch, changed out an old fixture, put up shelving, run coax cable, you name it. I like to make a space my own, and I want everything just so.

The other day I made myself very proud.

I bought an articulating wall-mount for my little 19″ flat panel TV in my bedroom. It’s such a small screen that it does me no good to have it on the wall facing my bed because it’s so far away. So in order to make it work on the wall parallel to my bed, I needed to make it move. So I bought this guy:

It was a cinch to screw it onto the back of the TV. There was a second piece that went onto the wall directly. It even had a built-in leveler so you could mark your drill holes exactly right! Putting the wall mount piece in wasn’t HARD, but it was a little scary because I had to use a 1/4″ drill bit to put in the bolts. It may not sound like much, but that’s a BIG hole to put in your wall. Two big holes, actually. But it worked.  Then the part with the arm just slid onto it and clicked in place.

Then there were power and cable cords hanging down, looking ratty. I picked up some paintable wire covers at Lowe’s and used those to corral the cables and hide them neatly away.

Check it out!

The mounting hardware is rock-solid, and the swing arm is so cool. It doesn’t sit the TV flush against the wall, but that’s the price you pay for that articulating arm instead of a flush-mount. Well worth it, I say.

Go me!

It’s a double-edged sword, this dishwasher of mine.

When I was first viewing the apartment, I shook my head at the kitchen, noting the absence of a dishwasher.

“It’s kind of a deal-breaker for me,” I commented. “I’m lazy and I like machines to do the work.”

The apartment broker rushed to assure me that they are redoing kitchens in their properties one by one, and dishwashers were coming. In the meantime, she said, she’d be happy to order a portable dishwasher for me to use, and I could pass it on to another tenant if my kitchen was renovated during the time I lived there.

Right on.

My brand-spankin’-new portable dishwasher arrived on move-in day (like I needed another box, right?) and I pushed it into a corner while I focused on the mess with the movers. We ate off paper plates for awhile.

A few days ago, I decided to take all the foam and plastic out of the thing and try it out. Roll to sink. Remove unicouple and hose from back. Attach unicouple to the faucet by twisting – -

Oh. The faucet doesn’t have threads on which to twist the unicouple. The instructions inform me that my local hardware store should have some sort of adapter.

I unscrew the entire faucet and the unicouple adapter and put them in a bag, then slog off to the True Value hardware store a few blocks from my house.

“Please help,” I asked the old man behind the counter, showing him the stuff. “This needs to go onto this but it doesn’t have a thing.”

The old man screws up his lips and ponders the pieces for a moment, then walks silently to a rack of approximately ten zillion pieces of plumbing. He deftly plucks one from a hook, opens the package, and screws it onto my faucet head.

$3.59. All right.

Except that it didn’t entirely work.

I put the faucet back on the sink, put the gasket on the new threaded piece, and screw on the unicouple adapter. The unicouple clicks right on, nice and snug. Too bad that when I turn on the hot water to test the connection I get a wee bit of a hot shower in my kitchen.

I dig out a wrench and give the adapter a good crank.

Another shower.

I unscrew the whole apparatus, remove the gasket, and wrap it in plumbers’ tape. Gasket back on, adapter back on, tighten like hell.

Not a spray, but an aggressive dribble. I swear my cat was laughing at me.

I give up for the evening and have my Hot Pocket dinner on a paper plate. The next day I am back to the hardware store to get a second gasket to reinforce the first. More plumber’s tape on, twist twist twist, click the unicouple into place.

No drips!

I dance over to the counter and plug the machine in. I put soap in the container and a few dirty dishes in it to test the thing out. But before turning it on, I push a button to release the water pressure from the hose where I tested the adapter. Splash, into the sink – and the sink doesn’t drain.

Then it does. Very. Slowly.

Not good.

I find a bottle of Drano in my box of cleaning supplies and tip it down the drain. Fifteen minutes elapse and I am supposed to flush it down with hot water. Which, of course, drains only marginally better than it did before. I pick up the Drano jug and notice that it’s still heavy… turns out that whatever active ingredient is in it has settled to the bottom in a sort of bluish sludge, which I scrape out with a knife and poke down the drain in hopes that maybe it will help.

After another fifteen minutes and another flush of hot water, the sink drains a bit better. Adapter on, unicouple clicked into place, water test, no leaks – GO!

I refuse to leave the kitchen while the washer is running, so fortunately I am close by unpacking plates when I hear a little  noise.

Drip. Drip.

The adapter is dripping. But it’s just a little drip.

I go back to my unpacking. And the noise becomes a high pitched whistle. There is a small, fine spray coming from the adapter. But it’s just a little spray.

I can hear the water in the machine splashing around during the wash part of the cycle, so I know that whatever is in there is a soapy mess and I do not want to stop it right now. So I unpack some more.

Then it’s a bigger spray. I have visions of a deluge of biblical proportions.

I give in and crank the dial to “off” and undo the adapter. It gets another layer of plumbers’ tape and another good crank with the wrench, then I smack the unicouple back into place and set the machine to “rinse only.”

I still get a little dribble as the machine finishes out its cycle, but all I am praying for at that point is that I’m not sending a ton of rinsewater into a machine already full of soapy water, thus flooding the kitchen. But it all miraculously drains into the sink without overflowing, and I triumphantly detach the tubes and cords.

“Ha HAH!” I shout. “I win!”

E comes in from the living room and pats me on the back. “Good job, honey,” he says, relieved that he won’t have to deal with The Crazy anymore that night. “Let’s see how the thing did.”

I pull out a plate. It looks shiny and clean. He pulls out a fork. It has soapy sludge on the tines.

We both frown.

“What did we do with the paper plates?”

This is a post testing the WP2Tumblr plugin that’s supposed to be an option for putting some of my blog posts directly to my Tumblr.

Yes, I started a Tumblr.

My intention is to use it to post SOME of my stuff because my family always asks me about my blog and why they can’t read it – especially now that I’m being asked to do reviews and have parties because of my blog presence. They think I must be quasi-important (hah!) and I think that my unwillingness to let them read my blog in its entirety is making them feel a little left out. I just don’t want them futzing through all the back posts about E, about Tim… and I don’t want them reading about when I’m mad or depressed and whatnot. My family worries a lot. But I write about a lot of innocent things too, so why not share those? Or even slightly-edited versions of the mostly-innocent stuff, like Operation PANTS?

So I’m thinking that the Tumblr could be a sort of edited version of Swinging from the Chandelier. The WP2Tumblr plugin gives me a box on my “Write Post” screen that I can check if I want the post sent to my Tumblr, or uncheck if I don’t. And I can add little update-y bits on there too, just to keep them posted on things that I otherwise wouldn’t write an entire post about.

Could this be a good idea that allows me the opportunity to let the family in a LITTLE bit while not giving them access to all of the details?

What are your tumbly thoughts?

—————–

Update: WP2Tumblr WORKED!